FOLLOWING a spike in Covid-19 cases, Davao City is back to Alert Level 3 effective Friday, January 14, until January 31.

The Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) announced on Wednesday, January 12, that Davao City is among the 28 areas in the country to be elevated to Alert Level 3.

Davao City is the lone area in Davao Region to be placed under a semi-strict alert level classification following the increase of active Covid-19 cases in nearly two weeks.

On January 12, the city logged its highest new cases in a single day for the year 2022 with 243 cases. This brought the city's active cases to 811 in just a span of 12 days.

Meanwhile, the city's total confirmed cases are already at 54,700, wherein 52,094 have recovered and 1,795 had died.

According to IATF Resolution 155, the following activities are prohibited under Alert Level 3: face-to-face classes for basic education; contact sports (except those under bubble-type setup as approved by IATF), funfair and kid amusement industries; karaoke bars, clubs, concert halls, and theatres; casinos, horse racing, cockfighting, operation of cockpits, loterry and betting shops and other gaming establishments; and social gatherings where individuals do not belong in the same household.

The city was placed under Alert Level 2 on November 1, 2021, following the decline of active cases, which resulted in the decongestion of hospital utilization.

This had prompted the Davao City government to lift the mandatory reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test results to all travelers entering the city effective November 16, 2021.

Meanwhile, the rest of Davao Region is still under Alert Level 2 until the end of the month.